


dirty kind of happiness

by primaveril



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Blood and Violence, Body Horror but extremely light and metaphorical, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff, Guilt, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, based off Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone, fret not this IS sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-04
Updated: 2021-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-17 03:08:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29835090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primaveril/pseuds/primaveril
Summary: “Once upon a time, there were two moons, who were sisters / Nitid was the goddess of tears and life, and the sky was hers. No one worshipped Ellai but the secret lovers.” – Laini Taylor.In a world stricken by a war as old as time, love seems foolish; a luxury. But it’s a little more complicated than that, it seems.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	dirty kind of happiness

**Author's Note:**

> hello! miss me much? lol  
> first of all i have to make it clear that this is ENTIRELY based off Laini Taylor’s amazing book trilogy and you all should 100% read it  
> and second, i am really really sorry if this is too confusing or hurried, this work is basically self-indulgent brainrot after i reread Daughter of Smoke and Bone for the millionth time T_T it’s just SO good  
> i hope you enjoy it!

Donghyuck is many things in his long, tempestuous existence. An older brother to some and a younger brother to others; a friend, to a select few; a lover, to someone he can’t –  _ shouldn’t  _ – name (not now, not here). 

Donghyuck is also a soldier. A demon, too.

The battle burns like it’ll never end, the clanging of weapons and the cries of thousands of people, all at once, reverberating through his lungs. The seraphim’s wings are a blurred fire in the edges of his eyes, their blades mirroring the glow like they’re made of molten iron and years upon years of spilled, coagulated blood. Whose blood, at this point, is hard to tell; a few meters ahead, he can see three different bodies, beaten to a pulp and still quivering, definitely still warm to the touch.

It doesn’t matter  _ (not now, not right now). _

With a powerful flap of his wings, jaw clenched, Donghyuck pierces the sky with his twin swords, curved like half-moons and deliciously sharp, deadly edges glinting under light. The sky is thick with smoke and enemies, all black-stained fingers and dead eyes, hungry for a victory that doesn’t even matter anymore, after all these years.

Donghyuck can’t afford to think much right now, to think about the wet gasp Oora lets out when a blade slices cleanly through her chest, to think about the smell of charred fur, to think about the ebbing pain in his thigh, body thrumming with adrenaline, focusing solely on killing to not be killed _.  _ They have to finish this, before it escalates more than it already has.

It’s a blur, when he channels his energy solely on ending this battle. He’s Donghyuck of the Kirin tribe, with his shiny antelope horns curving back and huge, membranous wings; he’s Donghyuck, with his light feet and skilled hands, elegant like he could be blown away by the slightest breeze; Donghyuck, the Chimaera, with the way he slits throats before the enemy can even see his face – and, dear gods, his  _ face! _ He would be seen by anyone with impressionable eyes as a demon, as a  _ beast:  _ godless and beautiful and  _ terrifying,  _ with irises as black as the deepest tar against the whitest of scleras, wings so dark they could swallow the sun, smile so blinding it could overpower it.

The seraphim only retreat when their numbers start decaying rapidly, a pitiful sight of injured soldiers crawling back to their base camp before someone else kills them, fleeing as quickly as possible from the bay of Thisalene. Donghyuck loosens the grip on his blades when the only people he can see are other Chimaera, hands shaking and a breath caught in his throat, feeling as his heart rate slowly fizzles to something acceptable, something that won’t make his blood quite literally roar in his temples. The battlefield smells like metal, like ashes, and even the humid beach air can’t clear the stench of death that permeates the area like a sticky cloud. 

It’s almost haunting, the post-battle: collect the souls of the fallen, look for any remaining seraph, help the wounded, everything in an eerie silence that could only come after a rush of norepinephrine. As he stares at the ruined scenario – the remains of a beach with glimmering blue waters, softest white sand –, he wonders, a little dizzy, what are they actually doing. Waging a war for millennia, burning the living and killing the dead, battle after battle every day until they can’t hold a sword anymore. For  _ what? _ Until  _ when? _

Donghyuck wonders, as he closes a thurible tightly so the souls can’t escape, what would force a war to stop. What could end a war like theirs, something that has been following them like ghosts for centuries, eating at their minds and forcing the children to grow up too fast? What could be strong enough, powerful enough, big enough to make their people unlearn the violence, the bloodthirst, the need for vengeance? It seemed so unrealistic, to think about a future with no teeth and claws out, no bloodstains dark against the green grass.

The remaining soldiers head back to the base camp slowly, weighed down by the wounded and the exhaustion that slowly settles in their bones. Most of them could fly – the White Wolf made sure all Chimaera were resurrected with wings, to make them stronger, faster, more  _ deadly _ –, but it seemed unnecessary, considering they set up camp not too far away from the battle site, hidden in the looming shadows of Veskal mountains. Donghyuck wouldn’t stay with them for too long, though.

He put the sealed thurible in the pile and ate a quick and tasteless meal with the soldiers, watching a few of them almost fondly. He knew some from training days, when they were still skinny little children, still dreaming of being a war hero, before the battles actually started and tainted the dreams with fear and bitter, bitter hatred.

When the camp fell asleep (except for the sentinels), Donghyuck casted an easy little invisibility spell over himself, a pinprick of pain in the great scheme of things. He could only hope, as he flapped his wings once more towards the inky black sky, that the war  _ would _ end. Maybe it wouldn’t be now, maybe it wouldn’t be in a hundred years, but all he wanted was a better  _ future _ . A future where no land was burned and no blood was spilled on beautiful beaches. A future where, instead of learning how to hack and slash from a young age, their people would learn how to sew and paint, how to sing and dance and hold hands while the sun sets.

A future where, maybe, an angel and a demon could find peace in each other.

When he thinks about all that – his sweetest dreams, that no soldier should be having –,  _ his _ name springs to his mind almost immediately, like a patch of sunlight shining through the treetops. Donghyuck even has to bite down a smile, sometimes, catching himself drowned in the most sugary of daydreams. Then he remembers the bodies, the blood, the smell of charred horns and fur, the horror that is seraphim fire, and guilt crawls up his throat like bile, evil and acidic. 

Still, he flies up and away, each beat of his monstrous wings pulling him apart at the seams, like he’s turning his back on his own kind. It scrubs him raw, questions coming from the inside of his own soul and tearing their way out, tears building under his lashes and silently rolling down his dirty cheeks as the landscape slowly changes under his body, the thick shadow of the forest almost taunting him.

Donghyuck is a demon covered in blood and sweat and ash (and tears, now), covered in shame for what he has been doing these past weeks, but when he sees, far away in the horizon, the marble dome of the Temple, his heart still tugs and tugs and  _ tugs, _ a dirty kind of happiness that makes him both want to smile and run away. Run away from  _ him. _ From  _ them. _

(Like he could ever do that, in this lifetime or another.)

The two moons are hanging almost above his head by the time Donghyuck’s tired wings bring him to the Temple of Ellai, Nitid a heavy silvery circle in the sky and her sister only half-bitten, casting glorious light on any exposed area. He can’t even appreciate the beauty that it all is, the tall columns and chiselled stones, the gurgling water stream running through it all, the way the statue of the Moon Goddess seems to almost glow in the penumbra, his entire body throbbing with exhaustion and his head hurting viciously. Donghyuck’s already familiar with the Temple, anyway.

One thing he’s never going to get used to, though, is  _ him. _

Mark of the Stelian is composed of angles, of high planes and shadowed lows, sharp edges and the softest, tendermost eyes, burning coppery shades against the milkiness of his skin. Mark is velvety black hair and fiery wings, white as summer rainclouds and burning with the intensity of a dying star. Mark is the curve of a pink smile and Donghyuck’s heart lurching in his chest, hands and arms bubbling with the electricity between them, so close but still far,  _ too  _ far.

He’s sitting at the foot of the altar, sculpted with marble and sunlight by the Goddesses themselves, and Donghyuck’s wings quiver with the urge to propel him ahead, like an anxious songbird. His hooves make a delicate noise against the stone floor, and he can’t control the giddiness, the swirl of flower nectar and rainwater in his stomach, when they meet each other halfway, palm to palm and heartbeat to heartbeat. It’s  _ painful, _ almost, how much they want and how much they waited for this, as little as it seems.

And Donghyuck says, quietly gentle, “hello.”

And Mark replies, smile like a thousand suns, “ _ hello. _ ”

A greeting. A welcome gift.  _ I’m home, _ they say.  _ I’m here, _ between the lines. Donghyuck cups his face – his angel’s face, intricate like a cathedral’s windows, delicate and battle-scarred –, desperate to pour his love right into his veins, wanting to pump himself dry into his hummingbird-heart until Mark’s fit to burst with affection and adoration and all of Donghyuck’s pink-red feelings. He settles for kissing him slow and electric, though, connecting wherever they can: hands on waist and hands on neck and the Chimaera on Mark’s lap like he was made to fit there, between his arms with their mouths sticking together all sweet and slow. 

It’s so easy, with the seraph: he’s naturally kind, eyes too warm and a heart made of gold, an unmistakably forgiving soul, still thriving in a time of wrath and pain. Any other angel would’ve speared right through Donghyuck’s heart, back in the misty black shores of Tav, where he was bleeding profusely and ready to accept his fate; the angel with orange eyes didn’t. He’d bandaged the demon’s torso and had looked right into him with those sunset irises, seeing everything and then more, upturned mouth a petal-color fuzz in Donghyuck’s shaken mind.

They were fools for thinking they could’ve ignored the pull at their hearts, that day.

Mark kisses the curve of his neck and the demon sighs, muscles sagging against his sturdy body, pliant and boneless as he’s handled with caring hands, even if he definitely smells bad after an entire day of sweat has dried on his skin. His wrong, awful emotions from earlier seem to evaporate when Mark hums, happily, against him.

“Come wash up with me,” the angel says, as if reading his thoughts, and who is Donghyuck to deny him anything?

In the warm volcanic waters behind the Temple of Ellai, scrubbing off the filth of war until his skin is back to its natural tone, there’s nothing more the demon could ask for. Nothing could’ve felt more  _ right _ than being nestled under Mark’s chin, head tilted slightly so his horn doesn’t poke him in the eye, chest to chest as Donghyuck mindlessly hums an old Chimaera song in their snarl-hiss-growl language, rhythmic and primal. ( _ “I think it sounds beautiful. Your voice makes it even better.” Donghyuck buries his face deeper into Mark’s neck, cheeks pleasantly warm. “Oh, Ellai– Shut up.” _ ) 

It’s these stolen moments, shimmering with tenderness, that make Donghyuck wonder about a future, brighter and filled with love. Will they get to do this without fear, someday? Will they get to walk together, side by side, and laugh until their ribs hurt, like the world doesn’t matter? Will they get to – he feels a sickeningly loud thrum inside him at the thought, like a chord of his own soul has been plucked – live together, under the same roof, sharing a bed and a breakfast table and afternoon kisses tasting of sweet tea? His face feels warm, fingertips tingling, and he’s not sure if it’s the water’s fault.

Mark tells him little nothings in his velvety voice, murmurs about the birds he’s seen and the beauty of Donghyuck’s animal legs, and the demon feels  _ safe, _ nestled in his arms. He’s solid and real and comfortable, he’s really  _ there, _ pressing kisses to Donghyuck’s temples and rubbing circles on his arm for the simple pleasure of touching him, of caressing him.

The fire of Mark’s wings trembles, though, lit even underwater, and it immediately reminds Donghyuck of  _ them. _ What  _ they  _ are. What  _ Mark  _ is. He can recall easily the smell of burnt bodies, the acres of burnt land, the marks on their fingers – each black line for a killed Chimaera –, and here comes the bile, the guilt, the  _ sadness,  _ Gods!, a sadness as cold as the peaks of the Adelphas mountains, searing through Donghyuck’s entire soul and making him want to curl into himself, away from Mark’s –  _ darling Mark, sweet Mark, gentle Mark _ – hands like he’s been burnt.

The seraph feels the way Donghyuck’s muscles tense, squeezing him softly against his chest. “Are you okay?”

Donghyuck bites down on his lip. Is he? Has he been okay, in these past weeks they’ve been meeting secretly in an abandoned temple? The answer is easy ( _ yes, terribly so, the happiest he’s ever been _ ), but it’s precisely why his throat feels raw, why his heart feels so heavy. Mark should’ve killed him, let him bleed to death in that stupid beach, but the Universe works in mysterious ways, it seems, tying together puzzle pieces that don’t seem to fit at all.

He sighs, lifting his head from its delicious hiding place. There’s pleasure in seeing the angel’s face, how sweet it is, how much beauty a being can hold, and Donghyuck lets a finger glide on the blade of his cheekbone, swelling up with affection as Mark blinks lazily, cat-like. “Do you love me, darling?”

There’s no hesitation, not even a twitch in his lips. “So much. Too much.”

By the goddesses, he wants to dig into the seraph’s very core, nails caked with his blood, wants to eat his heart and guts out, in a truly bestial fashion. Donghyuck wants to love him freely, unabashedly, show him off for the whole world to see. Donghyuck wants  _ so  _ much,  _ too  _ much, and it  _ hurts. _

“Do you think…” He swallows the emotions digging into his ribcage like angel blades. Water sloshes as his wings twitch nervously behind him. “Do you think we could have a future, in a world like ours?”

The intensity in Mark’s eyes terrifies him. “We  _ can, _ and we  _ will. _ ”

He’s seraphim fire and the force of a thousand suns, hands gentle on Donghyuck’s waist, and the demon knows he’d wage war on the Emperor of the Seraphim if it meant making him happy, if it meant giving him anything he wanted. Mark is a man with the heart of an army, but he’s not powerful enough to stop a war that’s been burning for millenia, Donghyuck knows this, too; he kills the little kindling of hope in his foolish heart, the sweet voice that sings of uniting battalions, of setting aside their differences to fight for a better tomorrow, to overthrow the tyrant that ruled the Empire. It was a beautiful dream, but an empty one. An impossible one.

Donghyuck lets his hand glide down the cut of Mark’s jaw to rest on the concave of his collarbone, warm skin on warm skin, the echo of each water drop tempting him to just forget about it all and pretend the outside world doesn’t exist. Would anyone really mind, if they disappeared? If they ran away and lived together somewhere deserted and out of reach, a little bite of Paradise just for them? They were merely weapons of their Warlords, flesh forged to wield swords; no one waited for them back at their military bases. 

How laughable. A relationship made entirely out of sugar-honey dreams and wishful thinking.

The demon lets a smile play on his lips. That doesn’t sound too bad, actually, as he tilts Mark’s chin a little higher, staring dazedly into his fiery, lovestruck eyes. “Kiss me.”

And kiss they do, in their sugar-honey dream-like fashion, the seraph’s hand coming up to cup Donghyuck’s jaw and steady him as he’s devoured, destroyed, kissed so thoroughly not a single piece of his brain is left in place. Their world was too small to contain a love as big as theirs, too shattered to let their love flourish and bloom as it should, but it doesn’t mean it can’t  _ try. _

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!! please consider commenting so i can feel a little more motivated to finish all my wips T__T  
> [twt](https://twitter.com/bardieI) | [cc](https://curiouscat.qa/dawnfruits)


End file.
